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Every time I get near the Central California Coast, I try to arrange a side trip to Cambria by the Sea. It is a beautiful little town, though rather too “touristy” these days. And, of course, the beauty of the seacoast is a major draw for this ol’ California Jubilado. But it is one simple fact that draws me to Cambria more than all the rest. The Sea Chest Oyster Bar has the best calamari in the world! The world as I have experienced it anyway. Yet, all the Costs of Calamari are greater than the price of the meal.

Anyone who enjoys seafood knows that ordering Calamari is a haphazard proposition in most restaurants, even the “best” (expensive) ones. Nearly always, you get a plate of those little deep-fried breaded rings and tentacles. They may be tender or tough, or even downright rubbery, whatever the price. I was unequivocally shocked when, during my inadvertent adventure in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a waitress delivered a large plate of calamari strips I had bravely ordered for an appetizer. We quickly learned that they serve huge portions of everything in “T or C,” and all the people are above average…weight. Out in the middle of the southern New Mexico desert, I tasted Calamari that was in my top ten ever. I was surprised that I got strips, not rings and tentacles. They were amazingly tender and tasty. More can sometimes be better.

Best Dinner

However, the calamari strips or steaks at the Sea Chest in Cambria are clearly number one. According to Steve, who has cooked there forever, they buy their Calamari from a fishing outfit somewhere in the western Pacific. Those squid must be huge. Once tenderized and lightly breaded, the steaks range to ten inches across and about a quarter inch thick.

Watching the cooks behind the Sea Chest Oyster Bar is an entertainment in itself. They prepare everything on industrial grade high-fire stoves, mostly in large pans and pots. Scallops, halibut, crab legs, whatever, it is all fresh and delicious. A Sea Chest calamari steak is a meal in itself, so tender you can cut it effortlessly with a fork. It is lightly breaded and sautéed in butter to a golden brown. The action at the stoves among the five or six cooks is a study of efficiently orchestrated motion as they weave their motions in the small space between the prep counter behind the bar and the stoves at the back wall.

“External” Costs

So, there I was the next morning recovering from calamari overload, a once in a few years delight. Yet I wondered what the real costs of this extravaganza might be. Sure, we know that the restaurant incorporates various materials (calamari, butter, etc.), labor, rent, supplies, power, equipment maintenance, and overhead in the price of its dishes. The costs of extraction from the western Pacific, shipping, refrigeration, etc., go into the price tag as well. However, as with so many of the production processes of industrial society, the so-called “externalities” of such supply chains are not part of the equation.

I might find it difficult to calculate easily the global carbon emissions from the entire chain of energy consumption from extraction to consumption and waste in the ‘calamari trade.’ The costs of calamari were not all reflected in the price of the meal. I did not waste any of my dinner; it was too good, so I had my leftovers for breakfast. Yet, if I could calculate the external costs, how much of the $29- price of my fantastic meal would reflect the damage done to the planet?

Not much, if any, I suspect. If all the costs of the Calamari trade were included in the price of a meal, I doubt that I would ever afford to eat a calamari steak again. We must recognize that even with the best of policies responding to the converging crises of the early twenty-first century, life will not be the same. We must shape it anew. For more on carbon emissions and the costs of affluence, see other posts on www.thehopefulrealist.com.

In aviation, it is all about making the right decisions and executing them with precision and exact timing. From what I have learned about the incident when Captain Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after a flock of geese took out his engines, the man is a consummate aviator. He rapidly assessed his dire situation and made the best possible choice, which was outside the normal procedure.

Facing Reality

One of the big human tendencies in aviation that gets people killed we call, “get-there-itis.” All sorts of pressures, mostly social, keep some pilots on a course that circumstances demand they abandon. A former FAA weather briefer reported in a webinar having briefed a pilot determined to get to Reno for a Thanksgiving dinner. He was just not listening to her warnings of severe turbulence and thunderstorms along his flight path. The briefer heard his children in the background boarding his airplane. In desperation, she said, “Sir, do you want your children to live?” “What?” She finally had his attention. “Well, if you proceed, they very well may not!” The father’s pilot-ego stood down.

I cannot help but consider the “get-there-itis” syndrome as an ironic metaphor for the present course of humanity toward climate catastrophe and societal collapse. Power elites, in their deep cultural denial, keep insisting we find (wildly inadequate) business-as-usual “solutions” to global warming, which will keep us on that terminal path.

Abort!

On our way to the Negrito airstrip in the Gila National Forest a couple of years ago, the fuel pressure indication began acting up again. I felt that the likely cause was in the fuel pressure sensor. I could not imagine how the fuel pump could cause such high pressure. By the time we were within 20 minutes to our destination, the fuel pressure indication had gone up and back down to normal several times. It was getting disconcerting.

Now, over the remote Gila National Forest, with fewer and fewer roads and meadows appeared below us. I remembered reading of a pilot who had ‘crash landed’ his Glasair Sportsman in the trees and walked away. The Sportsman has a tubular steel cage as its superstructure, similar to that of an Indi racecar, making it relatively “crash-proof” compared to an easily crushable aluminum airframe. That’s nice, but who wants to crash? I had no interest in pushing the boundaries.

When the fuel-pressure indicated over 100 psi, I made my decision. I pressed the ‘Nrst’ button on my GPS, already aware that the nearest airport (TCS) was at Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I turned to follow the magenta line on my primary flight display, the shortest path to the airport.

Safe Landing

I contemplated for a second the broader irony of the name of my new destination. We landed without incident, beginning a new phase of our “inadvertent adventure.” Rather than risk an engine fire and a 100 octane flaming crash in the forest, we would miss the camp-out. We spent the next few days finding a mechanic, diagnosing the problem, waiting for a $40- sensor, and installing it in about 10 minutes. We took off at dawn the next morning and enjoyed an uneventful flight home, before dangerous thunderstorms built up as forecasted for the afternoon.

Humanity is at a turning point. We must make a major course-change in our unrelenting adventure and achieve a balance with nature. Can we land in a livable climate by drastically changing direction? We have no time left to contemplate that decision since we must act now to abort our flight of fantasy. It may be hard to turn away from the imaginary destiny of our utopian dreams, but we must. The risk has become extreme.

I had not flown in almost four years. I recalled retired folks telling me that when I retire I would find myself with too much to do. I didn’t pay much attention. Not having to work sounded like not having much to do at all. Well, they were right. It’s hard to find time to do everything you want to do if you are interested in everything and have the time to choose more than time allows.

You Can’t Do Everything, but You can Try

I’ have nearly completed final revisions for my book, “At the Edge of Illusion.” Writing does take a lot of time. I had enjoyed the time I spent writing a blog, Diary of a Mad Jubilado, on aparallelworld.org, a site designed by Alan Hoffman to bring together environmentally conscientious consumers with vendors of products with small carbon footprints. The site went down after bots and trolls destroyed its fundraising efforts. The techs thought the bots and trolls were Russian. Who knows?

Working with GotSol to bring greater awareness and adoption of renewable energy in New Mexico took a lot of time too; it was personally satisfying work. We established the annual “Renewable Energy Day” at the state capitol. Woodworking takes as much time as you put into it. So does flying. After a couple of cataract surgeries, travel to Scotland, Alaska, and Mexico, and the financial drain they caused, I found I was not flying much. Oh, I’d stopped altogether!

Up in the Air Again

After my flying hiatus, I completed the annual inspection required by the FAA for all non-commercial aircraft (commercial aircraft must be inspected every 100 hours of flight). I was shocked to realize that it had been four years since I had flown. Flying had been a passion of mine my whole life; how could I have let so much time pass without it? Mad Jubilados can get very busy…and broke, very easily. Flying ain’t cheap.

All pilots must complete a Biennial Flight Review every two years with an FAA authorized examiner. who enters an endorsement in the pilot’s logbook if demonstrated skills in the air are satisfactory. In an hour and a half or so, he signed me off, authorizing me to fly. I did so for several days straight, practicing “slow flight” (the configuration used in approaches to landing), power-on and power-off stalls, and of course, takeoffs and landings. As they say, “Every landing you walk away from is a good one.” My standards are higher than that. With consistent practice, my skills improved rapidly. I felt good.

Down Again, by Diversion

However, I was getting intermittent erratic readings on the fuel pressure indicator. Sometimes, on starting the engine, it would surge into the ‘red,’ as high as 50 psi (normal is 25 or 26), but it usually returned to the normal range. Sometimes it would surge during normal flight. I checked with my mechanic, who had no answer.

Two more flights and the ‘anomaly’ did not reappear. The next day, we packed up and began our flight to a small airstrip in the Gila National Forest for a weekend of “airplane camping” in the beautiful mountain wilderness of southern New Mexico with a dozen or so members of the New Mexico Pilots Association, their families and friends.

TCS from the air

Within a few miles of our remote destination, I made an abrupt left turn, direct to Truth or Consequences, NM, Municipal Airport, TCS, where I made the emergency landing. The indicated fuel pressure had risen to over 100 psi. I believed that the reading was due to a defective sensor, but in mission-critical situations certainty is a necessity. Maybe the fuel pump was over-pressuring the lines. A blown fuel line in the engine compartment would have produced a fiery end to more than one flight. That was certain.

The Answer was mounted on the Firewall.

The ‘inadvertent adventure’ continued after a safe landing at TCS, the nearest airport when I determined that an immediate landing was necessary. Finding a mechanic at this small-town airport was not easy, and was followed by several days of technical and organizational struggles, punctuated by a little recreation.

The complexity of resolving logistical problems of parts acquisition in a remote location became very apparent and required a lot of waiting time. I began to think of the relationship of “get-there-itis” to not only aviation safety but to the headlong rush of industrial society to the modernist dream of a utopian destiny fueled by impossibly endless economic growth, a future that will surely disappear in flames before we ever get there.

In recent weeks, I have had the experience of being in some very large chunks of the “built environment.” The airports in Houston and Mexico City are just huge, if not spread out as far as the terminals at Denver. Even looking out the bay windows in an attorney’s downtown 16th-floor conference room at the snow-capped Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque was stunning. It wasn’t just the view, it was the character of the monumental architecture that provided it. These structures are meant to impress.

Livable Cities

What makes a city work? Well, people of course. But so much more. It is about how they live and work and interact, and how they maintain the qualities of the more mundane elements of the built environment they inhabit. Cities, towns, and villages are all complex adaptive systems with all sorts of nodes and links between them, which function in so many ways to keep them alive. The average lifespan of corporations is ten years. Cities live so very much longer for too many reasons to list here. In short, they are alive.

Some Cities, like New York, succeed in spite of themselves. It helps to be the financial center of the universe if you want to be known for super highrise office buildings. But where is New York’s charm, its human qualities? In its neighborhoods, of course. Don’t look for charm in Trump Tower’ all you will find are pretensions of wealth. Extreme disparities in wealth and poverty can exist within an otherwise great city.

Haarlem is a small city near the much larger Amsterdam, in progressive Holland where public spaces are revered, used, and preserved. Haarlem has all the benefits and less of the crowding of its larger neighbor 15 minutes away by rail, bus, or car.

City as Celebration

Edinburgh is my favorite city in Scotland, but I was only there during its world-famous month-long summer Edinburgh Festival, which made crowding fun. The Festival is accompanied by “The Fringe,” the world’s largest arts festival, scattered among the streets throughout the city. It seemed every language could be heard on the cobblestone walk-street near Edinburgh Castle. And the Edinburgh Book Festival, held that same month, is exciting for any reader. Well, again, it’s a world-famous lovely city. Its charm is well aged.

But what is it about Lyon? Despite all the iconic sights and sounds of Paris, I much prefer Lyon as a city to simply be in and enjoy. Of course, it has lots of museums, a major university, medieval walk streets and neighborhood cafés, etc. Much of Lyon remains at human scale.

In the beautiful green rolling hills of springtime central France, I enjoyed watching the two rivers running through Lyon. Rivers offer special opportunities for urban living. As with the canals in Haarlem and Amsterdam, which are lined with houseboats and barges, they are venues for walking along park-like banks with lots of trees and the occasional monument.

Lyon has integrated the medieval and the modern in its architecture. A tram runs up to the cathedral on an adjacent hilltop where you can look over the entire city, noting the changes in texture from center to periphery. On a clear day, you can see the Alps.

Unlike in the U.S., the French don’t constantly destroy the old to affirm the new. In central Lyon, the ancient buildings, mostly hand built of stone, are “modernized” in their facilities while retaining the beauty and charm of their ancient origins. And it is all at a human scale. The city is walkable, which allows discovery of that small otherwise unknown shop, café or bistro, or that statue on the square where elders converse and children play.

Valuing the Valuable

Instead of donating them to the Metropolitan Museum as promised, Donald Trump simply threw away the art deco sculpture and ironwork from a historic building he tore down to replace with one of his megalomaniacal towers. The French helped us gain our national independence from our British colonial masters (who also appreciate the old). We still have much to learn from the Europeans about, well, just living.

Our cities – and our politics as well – could use some of their sensibility now. Santa Fe has retained some of the aesthetic of its Pueblo Indian and Spanish Territorial styles in its historic district and classic plaza, giving it much of the character lost to so many American cities. We have so much to do to make American cities livable (not pseudo-“great again”), and so little cultural will.

Obsessive self-importance may be the new normal, and it is not pretty. We have all seen over-inflated egos expressed, from the poorest streets of our cities and dying towns to the elevated offices of CEOs and the White House itself. Likely as not, we have all tried to demonstrate our own self-importance.

Trump Rally Rage

Why is something that should be an aberration, so common? Well, the answer is complicated but clear. Expression of self-importance as psychological compensation for the lack of power and respect in our lives is not new. Yet, today it seems at a peak as it is seen in the new racism, xenophobia, domestic violence, politics, and just about every part of our lives. Security is scarce and anxiety is high. Anger is cathartic.

Self-Worth Shortage

We all need to feel worthy. If secure in our relations with family and community, we do feel our self-worth in our natural relations with others. When we are not sure of where we stand with our peers or “significant others,” be they family, coworkers, or powerful people we hardly know, the likely result is status anxiety. Well, status anxiety runs rampant in modern industrial-consumer societies, as does economic anxiety since so few jobs pay a living wage or are secure anymore.

Anxiety is an expression of fear, the fear of what is to come, how it may affect me, and the fact that I have little or no control over the outcome. Since people can do so little about the sources of modern anxiety, they often compensate psychologically by expressing self-assurance. As often as not, self-assurance comes off as some demonstration of how “I am important, much more important than you.”

Expressions of self-importance are everywhere. People often use the automobile as a tool we can control to show our self-importance. Unfortunately, as with shopping, the benefits do not last. And the risks may be physical, not just economic. Typically, “road rage” asserts power in reaction to someone else’s lack of deference to the offended one, if not just incompetent driving. To the self-important driver, “it’s my road; you must show deference to me.”

Some years ago, I made a lane change on a busy street, to get to the left-turn lane. The driver behind me was not at all close; that is, I did not cut him off. Immediately, he roared around me to the right, cut in front of me, and slammed on his brakes. This guy was clearly making a statement of self-important rage. I tried to see if he had a gun, as I acted as passive as I could, dropping back as he sped up having demonstrated his vehicular power. Fortunately, I saw none.

Just Because I’m Me

People do not need to work up a case of road rage to express their self-importance in a car. The mere presence of another driver is enough. When I taught social research methodology at Cal State University, I often gave an initial assignment to go out in the world and observe some social behavior, write up descriptions and analyze what happened. I got some boring reports and a few very insightful ones. At least some students discovered that it is not such a simple matter.

One semester, a young woman who had not stood out in another class, chose to observe behavior in the campus parking lot. Shauna focused on the interaction between drivers when one is leaving a parking place while others search for one.

Shauna timed dozens of people leaving their parking places, from unlocking their door to pulling out. When another driver was waiting to take that place, departing drivers consistently took more time to leave than drivers with nobody waiting to take their parking place. They adjusted their mirror, arranged their books or backpacks, put on lipstick, checked their cell phone, or anything that would slightly delay their departure. They seemed to be saying, “This is my parking place and I’ll give it up when I am good and ready.” They were not reacting to some behavior of the waiting driver. They were asserting a bit of self-importance in a world where personal control is a scarce commodity.

A core feature of industrial-consumer economies is the social fragmentation that leaves individuals isolated, alienated, and with little personal power in their lives. They must somehow fit into the institutional matrix to survive; that offers almost no personal basis for self-worth. The alienated expression of a false sense of self-importance is a poor substitute for the healthy social relations that breed self-worth.

Wake up call for federal employees: In the era of Trumpery, life is really lived on the edge of insolvency and pain. Forty percent of the American people cannot cover a single $1,000- emergency. Most federal employees, though slightly better paid than their counterparts in private industry, live maybe a couple of paychecks ahead. The cost of living is much higher than the bogus government calculation of low inflation. Like most Americans, they have little savings to tide them over during a government shutdown.

No Respect

FAA air traffic Controllers are some of the most competent and dedicated professionals I have ever met. They operate in a high-stress environment where the “clearances” they issue to pilots in the national airspace routinely carry life and death implications. Especially during high traffic periods and under rapidly changing weather conditions, their prowess in skillfully coordinating the flight paths and altitudes of multiple high-speed jet airliners and slower small planes is amazing.

Near Miss. Photo: JetlineMarvel.net

As a long time pilot, I understand the “mission critical” character of the everyday work of these federal employees. I remember distinctly when Ronald Reagan busted their union resulting in the loss of some of the best most experienced controllers then operating. I noticed immediately thereafter, an unmistakable drop in the quality of air traffic control operations. I felt I had to be extra careful to maintain a reasonable level of safety in the air.

Many other federal employees live with far less daily stress on the job. I have envied the National Park Rangers for the serene environment of their work out there in the beautiful National Forests that the plutocrats would privatize for oil and mineral extraction. Most people take federal workers for granted or just dismiss them as “bureaucrats,” especially if things don’t go well when they interact with overworked IRS agents or Social Security workers processing their paperwork.

Yet, the work of these diverse employees of the nation is important to one or another element of the everyday operation of the society itself. That importance becomes ever clearer when an arbitrary demand by the president forces a government shutdown because the Congress will not roll over to the bully who’s pretensions to power cannot grasp the basic concept of the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government.

Moreover, these folks have been arbitrarily made victims of the “government shutdown” that Trump forced by demanding the Congress pay for his ill-conceived and poorly defined wall along the Mexican border. It is especially disconcerting when we find out that the “border wall” meme originated as a mnemonic device conjured by his campaign staff to help him remember to talk about immigration to better pander to his xenophobic base.

Illusions of Border Security

In various places along the border, walls already exist because federal agencies deemed them effective, particularly around urban ports of entry. The Congress voted to fund them as part of prior border security legislation. It is widely known that most trafficking of drugs, about which Trump feigns such concern, cross into the U.S. through the busiest border crossings in passenger vehicles or trucks. Is a wall going to have any effect on that? Of course not.

Trump’s Border Wall could waste Billions. Photo: New York Times

Never mind the fact that illegal crossings from Mexico have steadily decreased for decades. Never mind that Trump violates the federal laws that allow applications for asylum by the victims of ruthless gangs and bloodthirsty dictators that U.S. foreign policies have caused or supported. However, let us not ignore the vicious persecution of children and their families that the obsessive xenophobia and demagoguery of a rogue president and an unhinged federal agency called ICE have caused.

Some say Trumplandia is the natural progression of the growing plutocracy in the U.S. since Reagan. True enough. But plutocrats abhor the messiness of democracy and care little about the pain they inflict on the people. When narcissistic sociopathic politicians have pretensions of authoritarian rule, as does Trump, the pain inflicted upon the people within and at the border becomes intolerable.

After a few days and a couple of back-and-forths with Seff Ramirez, locating a source of Huanacaxtle near La Peñita didn’t work out, so I tried another tack. I’d seen what appeared to be a tiny carpinteria in Los Ayalas, a small nearby beach town dominated by hotels and condos. I went to the carpinteria on a back street and asked to buy some wood. “No, no tenemos ninguno para vender; debe hablar con Martín en La Peñita.” He described the location of Martín’s Carpenteria y Maderaria (carpentry shop and lumber yard). I got the general area, but graphics always beat language for me.

“Tiene una mapa?” I asked. He drew me one on a scrap of wood. It was accurate to less than a half city block. What I saw there when I found Martín’s shop, the uninformed might consider a wood junkyard – they would have been oh so wrong.

I think that Martín the carpintero, has something, maybe a lot of things, to teach us post-modern corporatized professionals and entrepreneurial elitists in a world gone industrially mad. For now, I’ll just scratch the surface.

Despite my marginal Spanish conversation skills, Martín and I talked for over an hour as he showed me his dirt-floored shop, minimal machinery, and the wood he had stacked everywhere. We discussed wood and life at length.

I lusted for some exquisite 2-inch thick planks of Huanacaxtle more than two feet wide and maybe 15 feet long – absolutely beautiful. But I had no way to transport such a long

My Huanacaxtle

piece – woodworker’s rule of thumb: never cut a piece of wood unless you need to for what you are making. So I looked for pieces I could fit into the bed of my pickup truck. I picked out a couple of boards that had exceptionally interesting grain patterns. They were a bit longer than my six-foot truck bed, but we were able to fit them in diagonally. I later packed all our stuff on top of those boards for the trip home to Santa Fe.

Martín has a passion for his work like I cannot remember seeing in anyone else. “Madera es mi vida!” he smiled. He had been to many cities in the U.S. earlier in his life, but for the past 50 years, he had been working with wood in his home town, making beautiful furniture, windows, doors, and cabinets from Huanacaxtle and other tropical woods. Martín has definitely “followed his bliss” in La Peñita. He will die one day a contented man. How many of us can say that?

I have a hunch that if we of the industrial-consumer culture had been able to find our bliss, and then follow it, we would not be in the disastrous position we find ourselves in today. Instead, we have followed the ideology of everlasting economic growth, personal acquisitiveness, and national empire building, all at the expense of our humanity. It was a great ride in some ways, for some, while it lasted – and a heavy burden for many more. But it is nearly over now, except for the kicking and screaming.

Now we must figure out how to unwind the industrial leviathan and live at human scale again. This time we have the advantage, if we take it, of immense technical and scientific knowledge. We can even use some of that knowledge to develop new ways to live in harmony with the natural world we may again recognize ourselves as part of. We must construct a new human culture, extending the benefits of the old ways, in order to reintegrate with the living Earth System that once sustained us. To get it right we need to learn from those who still understand the old ways. To achieve that would not be unlike Martín’s life, at least in some very important ways.